The Last Stand
by DeathsRedMinstrel
Summary: What would have happened if Eric had lost control of the Nightfliers? What if they stormed Underhill? Now the last and least likely of the Elvenkin is left to face the enemy.


The Last Stand

**The Last Stand**

**A/N: This is an AU one-shot of what could have happened during ****A Knight Of Ghosts and Shadows****, if Eric had been seduced by or lost control of the Nightfliers one of the times he summoned them. It's inspired by a quote from the Diana Tregarde book ****Children of the Night****, which I highly recommend. Try to figure out what quote.**

The slender figure stood on a rocky promontory, his icy green eyes surveying the host below him in calculated detachment. Mist wreathed his form and that of the shadow army below him.

The hordes of Nightfliers were what had driven this one unlikely figure to his even more unlikely future. As he stood, his mind calculating odds as he watched the horde, few who had known him over the span of his long life would have recognized him.

It was Puck, not looking very puckish. His once mischievous emerald green eyes were hard, and he held himself with poise, ready to move on a moments notice. Still, he barely blinked as soft hoof beats chimed behind him.

Lystrande, his elvensteed slid to a halt beside him, her coal coat a stark contrast to the grey mist. The Nightfliers continued to ignore the still passive elf and his coal steed.

Puck knew what Lystrande's coming meant, and he closed his eyes and heaved a soft, but heavy sigh of both relief and sorrow.

The last of his kind were gone, Oberon, Tatiana and the Morrigan. All three, gone on the last ship to the lands far across the oceans of time and space. There remained only Puck and it was in his misty, rocky domain that the last battle for Underhill would be fought.

At first Bright and Dark courts had stood apart, but gradually millennia of conflict healed themselves in the face of a common enemy.

With the elves, they had taken what mortals they could, mages and Smiths and witches. If a new land was found, when a new land was found, and even before then, the mortals and the elves would sustain one another, providing the magic and imagination to thrive.

Puck looked out over his domain. For a long time it had been a wild, thriving forest, filled with laughter and light. Now it was a misty, gloomy, rocky domain, crafted so that he could keep his war going for as long as possible. He still wanted to get his hands on that bastard Bard Banyon and rub his nose in exactly what he'd done. Underhill was now a shadow of it's previous majesty.

His elven subjects were gone, but his constructs remained, as well as a few spirits and other beings that had not passed with the elves. Naiads and Dryads and constructs made with the long-ago bards like Taslien, they were bound to his domain, and they would help him fight his war against an enemy they could not hope to defeat.

One of those many constructs padded up to him, Torres, a long ago gift from Taslien and Aine, both close friends. Aine had died barely a week ago, slain by the Nightfliers.

He felt a deep, cold anger at the though of her death. She had been young compared to him, several hundred thousand years younger than he was. But he was one of the First, younger than Oberon and Tatiana and the Morrigan, but old enough to remember the short time that the triad had held their precarious balance, before Oberon married fiery Tatiana and the Morrigan split them into two. She had been young enough to deserve not to die.

Torres looked sideways up at his master, his eyes the same shade of emerald as Pucks.

_: Master, you can delay the attack no longer. Both Lystrande and I are here. The rest of us are ready.:_

The felenoid blinked at his master, and Puck gave a crooked half-smile. "Right." He murmured, barely breaking his silence. Dipping into his huge power reserve, he reached to his constructs and remaining subjects. Their minds acknowledged his in a release that let a dazzling web of information slide from them to him, from him to them. For a moment he was a thousand creatures, and yet one. He saw a thousand views of the host, but he saw only the horde below him.

Then he shattered the moment. They had work to do, and now was the time to do it.

_: Fight. Fight well and bravely my chevaliers!:_

The thousand views that burned behind his eyes degenerated into swirls of fighting and death. He felt/saw/heard his tiny army fling themselves into a battle they knew they could not possibly win.

Then he withdrew his mind. He had his own work to do. Closing his eyes, he summoned his armor. Strangely, instead of his green ivy twined about a gold sword, Oberon's six pointed azure star bloomed behind his closed eyelids, and when he opened his eyes, the armor was not his own emerald and gold, but Oberon's own ebony and azure.

Taking a breath, he pushed the meaning of his lord's gift to the furthest reaches of his mind, and mounted Lystrande, noting she was likewise caparisoned with black and deep blue, the six-pointed star blazing upon her chest.

For an instant, Puck reminisced on his life. Dancing and making love with Aine, teasing mortals on warm midsummer nights, standing grim between Oberon and Tatiana as their arguments grew heated and watching as their feuds grew cold.

Those would be no more, and those good and bad moments were lost to the past. He would never again play fool for the Seilieghe court, or dance as a bard played.

But now was not the time for regrets. Now was the time to fight, to die if need be.

He fixed his eyes again on the shadowy Nightflier host, more corporeal here than Overhill, and drew his sword. The sliding hiss of the blade leaving its scabbard called the attention of the army below him. He felt the shadows malignant gazes fix upon him in hunger.

He gripped Lystrandes barrel tightly with his legs and in the instant she leapt forward; he understood what war truly was.

In the end, they all faced the enemy alone.


End file.
